Poll watchdogs criticized the silence of political parties and civil society groups concerning the alleged electoral roll fraud to benefit the incumbency, which they said involved the government and the General Election Commission (KPU), The Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) has reported to the police electoral roll fraud cases in several regencies in East Java but no positive response has been given and, instead, party figure La Nyala Mattality, who revealed the scandal to the public, had to undergo police interrogation at the East Java provincial police headquarters in Surabaya, on Tuesday (June, 30 2009). The head of the election supervisory committee in East Java, Sri Sugeng Pudjiatmiko, confirmed his side reported more than 89,500 electoral roll fraud cases to the police and the report was expected to continue increasing as the committee was still conducting validations in the field. So far, the electoral roll fraud scandal has rocked the regencies of Sidoarjo, Tuban, Bondowoso, Kediri, Mojokerto, Madiun, Malang and Ponorogo "and so far, we have asked the provincial general election committee *KPUD* to scratch out double names and single identity numbers, dead voters and child ones from the list", Surya Daily quoted him as saying in Surabaya on Tuesday. Similar to alleged electoral roll manipulation in the April 9 legislative polls, the election supervisory committee also found similar frauds where the same person was registered more than 400 times or the same single identity number was used by hundreds of people in an attempt to raise the abstention level at polling stations on the election day, allowing poll workers to tick unused ballots to benefit a certain candidate. Jerry Sumampaow, coordinator of the Indonesian Voters Committee (KPI), stressed the electoral roll used in the legislative polls was not substantially different from that of the presidential election and the alleged systemic manipulation was still found with minor changes where names of the same voters were replaced with fake names apparently for the same goal: vote rigging. "Democracy is under threat since the people have been deprived of their voting rights, a violation that was not anticipated by the 2009 general election law because it does not allow Bawaslu and civil society groups to file class actions against the KPU and the government, two institutions responsible for preparing the voter roll," he said in a roundtable discussion Tuesday. "Both the Constitutional Court and the police rejected the report on the scandal because such problems are not deemed as crimes nor election conflicts." He said the KPU lied to the public when its chairman Abdul Hafiz Anshary declared Monday the country was ready for the race. Ray Rangkuti of the Indonesian Civilized Circle (Lima) challenged unregistered voters to file lawsuits to the Constitutional Court against the KPU and the government for the latter's failure to protect their constitutional rights. "Of 20 million unregistered voters in the recent legislative polls, only five million are registered for the presidential election." The House of Representatives was still conducting a political inquiry into the alleged electoral roll fraud. The Attorney General's Office (AGO) had recommended further investigation into the scandal. According to the AGO, the election can be suspended until all voters are registered if the JK-Wiranto and Megawati-Prabowo pairs ask the KPU to do so because the election date is not set in stone. Eep Saefulloh Fatah, a political analyst from the University of Indonesia, said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Home Minister Mardiyanto should be held responsible for the troubled electoral roll because they were the highest authorities in the population administration. "With the continued fraud, the KPU once again committed a big sin because it cannot manage the election professionally."
Author: The Jakarta Post
Author: The Jakarta Post
